Every X-book considered and assembled into a slipshod time-line, September '63 to May '86.

Saturday, 2 July 2011

UXM #29: "When Titans Clash!"

(If you can't trust an android bent on global domination...)

Comments

And so we bid adieu to the first new recruit to the X-Men, only two issues after he joined up. Mind you, within the Marvel universe his tenure lasted somewhere around three months, which makes Xavier look pretty stupid for putting up with him so long. I'm all for giving people the benefit of the doubt (unless they're Republicans), but if you've spent twelve weeks insisting someone has great potential only for them to decide they can't be bothered fighting evil and respond to being expelled by attempting to take over the world, you're going to end up with some serious egg on your egg-head. Indeed, even Cal's eleventh-hour conversion loses what little credibility it had when you consider he fought the Super-Adaptoid not because he decided to become a hero, but because he decided to avoid becoming a brainless zombie.

Hardly the stuff champions are made of.

In other news, I was so surprised that Jean would be preparing to ice-skate in the shortest skirt imaginable and with bare legs that I actually checked Marvel Digital Downloads to check how they were coloured. But no, it's true (this is the only picture I could find, it's also the only one in which you could plausibly think she might be wearing leggings):

Clearly Jean has some Geordie blood in her. Explains why she has an English surname, at least.

Whilst on the subject of mutandom's premier redhead, we clearly haven't gotten any further with Cyclop's obsession for her. I actually quite like the idea that the more he tries to hold in his blasts, the more powerful they become whenever he loses control, but things get exceptionally silly after that. Why is Scott so surprised that blasting a hill to rubble turns out to be a terrible idea? Why does he blame his mutant power for almost getting himself killed, rather than taking the Occam's Razor approach and concluding that he's just an idiot? And what's with all this nonsense about "smashing" everything that stands between him and Jean? What if she isn't in to him? What if she prefers Warren?

Whomever was directly responsible for managing the Super-Adaptoid's construction seems to have cut more than a few corners, and not just on the paint job. This guy boots up slower than my decade-old first laptop (though he's admittedly less plagued by paint stains and superglue spills). For an emotionless android, he's also an impressively mardy bastard. "Beware, mortal -- lest you try my patience!" doesn't exactly suggest the strict dictates of logical thought, does it?

Maybe that's why no-one can believe Iceman's outlandish story of battling a ten-foot robot. God, I hate this trope. It kept cropping up on Buffy as well. How can it possibly be difficult for the X-Men to believe Bobby fought a giant robot only a year after they all fought an army of giant robots? Or that time a few months before that, when they fought an army of giant robots? Number of daydreams Iceman has mistaken for reality: 0. Number of armies of giant robots: 2. I think we're all capable of doing the maths, here. [1]

Clues

This issue takes place over a single day.

We're now in December, on the day of the month's first freeze. Warren also notes that it's a weekend, which puts us, at the earliest, on the fifth of December, a Saturday. Despite this, Scott refers to his accident with Warren happening "only a few weeks ago." Since by our count the actual time-span is closer to six months, something's clearly not right.

This has long passed the point of being sloppy and taken us into full-blown insanity. I can't see any option other than to bring the events of issue #25 forward after all, and assume there really were several months between Jean receiving her letter and deciding to do anything about it. I'll put the updated timeline for all the issues to date into a separate post later today.

Date

Saturday 5th of December, 1979.

X-Date

X+614.

Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 2.03 standard years.

(Iceman is 39 years old.)

"I've got my eye on ya
every second, Beastie!"

Contemporary Events

Jack Lynch resigns as Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland.

Standout Line

"Dust and stones -- dislodged on my head! What being would dare --?" Don't sweat the small stuff, Mr Emotionless Killer Robo-Man!

[1] This is somewhat off the point, but it's worth noting that there is an inverted version of this trope that's equally maddening, though somewhat rarer. There's a prime example of it in the last episode of Firefly; Wash complains the idea of River being a mind-reader belongs in the world of science-fiction, only for his wife to point out they live in a spaceship.

A lot of people love that line, but it makes no sense. It's no different to me finding it hard to believe in telepathy and someone pointing out I flew to Munich last year. You can't have characters pointing out things that are odd to the audience if they're supposed to be normal to everyone the audience is watching.